Sunday, July 22, 2012

Toy
Architects is proud to represent a new Hamster custom made by Ryan Crippen
aka Reactor88.

Ryan
Crippen was born in Southern California. After painting and drawing continued
throughout his youth, Ryan eventually went to get a BA in Illustration and
Design. Once out of school, he immediately landed a web development job at a
local software company, where he still holds a full time position.

Late in
2005, Ryan decided to get back to his "roots"- so he dusted off his
pencils, paintbrushes and markers and returned to traditional illustration and
painting. Right around that time he was inadvertently immersed into the urban
vinyl toy scene as well- it started with collecting small limited edition
platform toys, which soon led to him custom painting the toys himself. He's
participated in custom toy gallery shows and his custom designs are sought
after by the vinyl toy community. Since then
Reactor88 has been developing a unique style in customizing the scene of
platforms and designer toys using totems as archetype.

The word
totem origins from the Ojibway word dodaem which means "brother/sister
kin". It is the archetypal symbol, animal or plant of hereditary clan
affiliations. Totem Poles as been used mainly cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North Americaby
carving from large trees. Like an original totem or totem pole
Reactor88´s customs have several faces like good and evil mostly
positioned one upon the other.
Even painting the back of a figure Ryan picks up the way totem poles can
be
turned around. The significance of Totem Poles is the fact that though
round shaped only “front” and “back” are being used to carve faces or
complete bodies.

We´re very glad to finally represent an original
Hamster – Totem made by Ryan Crippen aka Reactor 88. Just from the middle of
the last year I was curious to see the first pictures.Thank you very much,
Ryan!